Wow! its over a month now since I’ve been praying earnestly for this country and once you commit to doing something as radical as I think this is, it kind of takes over your whole life. My prayer times have become the most important part of my day, well they always were really but this time I feel more of a sense of urgency and purpose to them that I hadn’t experienced before. This blog has really been a surprise because this has just been secondary to the intercession but nevertheless it feels important to record how things are going.

This whole experience has taught me many lessons and one of the biggest is that our time is a terribly precious commodity that can be wasted or invested. I do think that the more we invest our time in God the more time we receive in return. It is a miracle of the tithe. The bible states in numerous verses about tithing, I’ve never been fully convinced that the tithe just talks about money. I think this is important however but it isn’t the whole issue. When God talks about wanting our first fruits notice it is plural so in my mind this means that I have more than just my money to give. I do think our money is one of the most difficult things to part with but once we have that argument out of the way the rest seems to fall into place. My time, my energy, my health are all things that we can give a tithe from and strangely we do receive more in return. This is just the biblical law of sowing and reaping. My efforts for God shouldn’t be conditional on my part to see what I will receive in return. It just will and is, I find this an amazing thing.

One of the most amazing things about tithes and offerings is that you don’t have to be a Christian in order to benefit from a biblical principal. I don’t like to mention names of businesses and people in this blog but on this occasion I will. Richard Branson as far as I am aware is not a Christian in the terms of being born again and believing in Jesus as his Lord and saviour but it has struck me that his ethos in business appears to be quite biblical. The Virgin Brand is made up of many, many companies. Richard Branson appears to be quite open to ideas for new ventures and allows people to grow if they can make a plausible business plan, when this becomes self-sufficient he cuts it from the parent company and gives it away to form an identity of its own. The company will then go off and more than likely become successful. The company then pays a levy to the parent company in order to maintain protection legally and financially. Now don’t shoot the messenger if this isn’t how its all done but this is how it looks to me.

A great many businesses and companies in this country have gone to the wall because they couldn’t find it within them selves to give something away and so it has perished because it hasn’t been able to grow in the way that it needs to. I pray for businesses in this country to learn the biblical principal of sowing and reaping and that this will be a continued blessing in order for this country to survive in this current climate of financial difficulties.